


tar and sagebrush

by brawlite



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gunplay, HYDRA Trash Party, M/M, Pre-Canon, dead dove do not eat, irredeemable trash, just actual trash, moderately consensual violence, safehouses are so boring this is really to be expected, the tag is a warning in and of itself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-08
Updated: 2014-09-08
Packaged: 2018-02-16 14:33:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2273376
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brawlite/pseuds/brawlite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Safehouse after safehouse after goddamn fucking safehouse. </i>
</p><p>Rumlow and Rollins play a game.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tar and sagebrush

**Author's Note:**

> i couldn't not join the hydra trash party. i am so sorry.

Safehouse after safehouse after goddamn fucking safehouse.

It was an absolute joke. If one smelled like mildew, the next smelled like mice, and the one after that of rot: pungent and woody and sweet. There were only a limited number of variables to choose from, and it seemed as if he had already seen every imaginable set. Every neglected, molding, and ancient pattern of wallpaper combined with furniture dragged from the side of the road and rugs from dumpsters  -- he’d seen it all.  He was pretty sure he’d even seen an aging, yellow chair patterned with roses at least three times, which didn’t even make sense.

But usually by the time the team hauled ass to one, sweaty and bruised from whatever mission, it didn’t matter what the place looked or smelled like. Hell, Rumlow’d watched a rat curl up and die after staggering across his foot after one of the worst missions he’s ever been on and he’d just fucking let it happen, too tired and sore to do otherwise.

Conversely, one of the best houses they’d ever set foot in was this sprawling rambler in nowhere Oregon. It’d been equipped with enough rooms for everyone to have their own, with showers luxurious enough to slit a man’s throat over. Water pressure was key after a grueling op, and hot water a bonus. Which meant, of course, that the safehouses they got shuttled off to were almost never equipped with something even boarding the definition of ‘nice’ when it came to a bathroom. The water in the last five had barely dripped out of the showerheads with practically negative pressure, and the water in two of those had smelled overwhelmingly of sulfur. Their current one, a small two-story farm house just outside of Tatum, New Mexico, had two passable showers. And enough beds, for everyone, if not rooms.

Thank god for small mercies.

Now, Rumlow’d seen more scorpions inside this current one than spiders, which was a bit new, but he’d take either of those over snakes. Don’t get him wrong -- snakes are just fine, but they don’t belong in houses full of trigger happy men. They’ll do just fine outside where Rumlow doesn’t need to tell anyone to clean up the mess.

A Devil Scorpion was slowly making its way across the floor -- Rumlow’d been watching it for the past few minutes, his boots kicked up on his desk while he flipped through mission reports on his StarkPad. Eventually he discarded the pretence of reviewing the reports and let the pad clatter down onto the desk. In one fluid motion, he pulled out a knife from a holster on his leg and scooped the scorpion up with the flat side, bringing it up to his face to have a better look.  
“Jesus Christ, leave that thing alone.”

The heavy beat of a familiar gait was enough to already alert Rumlow to the approach of his second in command, though he’d clearly made the wrong assumption that Rollins had been aiming for the vacant shower instead of the room they were sharing.  
“The fuck do you want?” Rumlow tsked and set the knife down on the desk as he turned to face the door, giving half a glance as the scorpion as it slid off the knife and under a piece of paper, aiming for dark and secluded. Whatever. Maybe it’d end up in Jack’s bed and he’d learn a valuable lesson about sneaking up behind people holding venomous insects.  


Rollins leaned easy in the doorway, lazily supporting himself with a shoulder against the splintering wood. “The boys dogged it into town to find booze and some tail. Didn’t have the heart to tell ‘em the town’s too small for easy pickin’s.”    


Rumlow just snorted at that. It’d been months now since they’d been back to headquarters for more than a twelve-hour turnaround. He knew his men: they were getting restless and he trusted them not to take no for an answer. “I have faith.” He said, rocking back in his chair as he watched his second in the doorway.  


Rollins shifted and brought out a bottle from behind his back with something that could’ve passed as a smirk if Rumlow didn’t know him any better. “You got faith, huh? I know you got faith in old Jose here. Figure we can find a better time here than any we’d find in town.”  


It was a well understood fact among the team that Rollins hated safehouses with a vengeance, a passion burning hotter than the sand beneath the mid-day sun. Rumlow knew better. It wasn’t that they made Jack angry or hateful -- instead, it was that they drove him bathit stir-crazy. He paced like a caged dog, getting openly hostile and hot with anyone who was dumb enough to cross his path. He hissed and spat and brazenly charged at the rookies, tearing them down easy and fast until they were crawling their asses to their cots by the end of the night. He was a coiled spring, a landmine just waiting to be set off. Brock could see it now, the fervor burning hot behind the shroud of a practiced gaze. Rollins was a grenade, live and sitting pretty,  just waiting for someone to pull the pin.  


Aw hell, explosives diffusion had never been Rumlow’s forte.  


With the itch in his trigger finger, he grinned a mile wide. With teeth. “Well darlin’, I thought you’d never ask.”  


As a child, he’d been the kid to kick the hornet's nest, just to see what would happen.  


Rumlow fingered the worn set of bone dice in his pocket -- a souvenir from some washed-up village in Africa, way back in the good-ol’-days. He couldn’t remember the name of the place --  wasn’t as good with names and places when they weren’t in good ol’ American, but it wasn’t important anyway. All he’d remembered was he pried them out of the cold dead hands of some wanna-be shaman when he and Rollins’d been rookies, both of them less broad, more eager, and still wet behind the ears.  


The game was simple: up the ante.  


Dust kicked at the legs of their fatigues as they both relocated to the worn, wooden floor of the room. “Don’t be a pussy, get down here.” Jack’d ordered, slamming the back of his boot down on the floor where he’d wanted Brock to sit. With some rearranging, they both settled with legs sprawled and hands making prints in the dust.  


Without a word, Rumlow rolled the dice.  


And with that first move, the game started. For the first few rounds of rolls and drinks, they sat quiet. Their team had never been able to figure out the exact science of the game, other than to understand, somehow, that Rollins was evens while Rumlow was odds. They rarely played it with other people around, given the tendency it had to escalate. Or rather -- if they brought out the dice around the team, the other men knew better than to stick around for too long. After all: there was no reason that bystanders couldn’t be pulled in to ‘play.’  


They didn’t need much discourse to play the game. Which really meant that Rumlow didn’t need Rollins opening his trap every two seconds. But eventually, one of them’d get bored of simply drinking in silence. “Six.” Rollins stated, with a wave to the dice that the other man was currently scooping into hand.  


“Fine. Ten seconds.” Six was an easy wager anyway -- too many combinations. Rumlow wasn’t surprised when he released the small bone cubes and they fell into a four and a two. He took a generous slug from the bottle and tipped his head in his second’s direction -- an unspoken question.  


“C’mere first, for good measure.” The taller man grinned, leaning in with an expectant look -- trying to be all fucking sneaky, Jesus. Knowing full well what was coming, Rumlow simply sighed and leaned forward on his knees, playing the game all the same. Rollins just barely closed the gap, gripping Brock’s chin with his fingers, running a calloused thumb down his jaw, all faux-affectionate like. He tilted his teammate’s chin this way and that, appraising with a quiet hum. A hot breath ghosted over Rumlow’s lips for a long second before Rollins was pulling back to smack Rumlow straight in the cheek with an open palmed slap that echoed throughout the room. Knowing it was coming didn’t prevent him from straightening his back with a grunt, opening his mouth a couple of times to stretch out the pain. “You douche.” But that was it -- no other argument came: that was the game.  


“Alright princess, put your hand flat on the floor, palm down.”  


Brock played to win, so he did just that. He felt the scratch of sand and dust underneath his fingertips, watching the paths his fingers made in the grime while Rollins pushed himself to his feet. And then, pain. The hard, crunching ache of the heel of Rollins’ boot on the back of his hand was livening, exhilarating -- and fucking ugly. He was acutely and unfortunately aware of each bone in his hand as they shifted under the weight, grinding together against the shifting pressure. And after a mental count of ten (twelve, for good measure), Brock slammed his fist against the back of his second’s knee, dislodging the hand. “Greedy as shit.” He hissed, clenching and unclenching his hand, checking all the bones to make sure they were in proper order. Of course they were: Rollins wasn’t stupid, but he had to check anyway, to ease the inescapable mental anxiety that came with a sudden rush of pain. “You fucking asshole. Eight. Roll the goddamn dice.”  


Rollins slumped back down to the floor with a laughed out “One minute.” Brock snorted something about him being cocky as shit as he rolled.  


Snake-eyes: no dice.  


Not surprising: Rumlow was never any good at playing the odds, not like Rollins was, anyhow. The asshole seemed to always know how the dice were going to fall.  


Seven rolls and multiple shots later and Rollins was sporting a black eye and tugging Brock’s hair back with a sharp yank. “Open, cunt.” And when Brock just shook his head, tugging back on the hair because it felt good, he got exactly what he asked for: another stinging slap to the face and a rough hand on his chin, prying his mouth open for him, a rough thumb pressing down on his tongue. “Look’it you, all pretty like this on your knees.” ‘Course, Brock knew what Rollins was aiming for, hovering over him like that, before he could even hear him hocking up the spit in the back of his throat -- they’d played this game enough times for it to have a familiar script. It was just as predictable as the goddamn safehouses, but more fun. He waited, watching Jack take his time with it, letting the spit trail out of his mouth and fall perfectly into Brock’s own open one. Tequila and cheap cigarettes was what it tasted like, warm and foreign as it dripped over his tongue. Fucking degrading, was what it was, and it earned Rollins a groan from the man on his knees. “Whining for it like a slut, huh?” There’d been no second-count for this one, just a round won fair and square.  


After a while, the game always dissolved.  


Their patience was thin to begin with and when it really came down to it, it was all a fucking ruse anyway, an excuse to act deplorably and without regret. After a while the drinking always turned to smoking, when they both ached for the tar in their lungs and the taste of ash on their tongues. The poison paired well with sweat and blood and grime, like a rich white wine with savory, buttery lobster. On occasion, if they were in the right place or had the right connections, cigarettes would turn into drugs, but those occasions were rare and carefully planned. They were, after all, goddamn professionals.  


Wiping spit from his stubbled chin, Brock shoved at his Second In Command’s legs. “My turn. Kneel.” True to game form, Rollins did so in one swift and fluid movement, laughing as he went. It was fucking weird to Brock, the way the other man got more graceful with every ounce of alcohol he consumed. It was just unnatural.  


Rumlow’s knife was still sitting pretty on the table, but his service pistol was easily reached, still in its holster on his waist. Brock was quiet as he drew his gun out, using it to trace the defined lines of his second’s face, painting those high cheekbones with firm red marks that would fade given enough time. Quiet. Careful. Jack was the one with the words, who liked to talk just to hear the sound of his own goddamn voice. Loved telling Brock to gag for it, choke on it -- but Rumlow didn’t even give him the chance to start.  


“Open.” The command was barely audible, but understood the moment Rumlow tapped Rollins’ lips with the barrel of the gun, running it rough along chapped lips. And Rollins, good soldier that he was, didn’t need to be told twice. Within seconds, Rumlow was watching the barrel of his pistol disappear between those familiar lips. It was a high, watching his partner tongue the barrel with spit dripping from his lips. The phantom smell of gunpowder and oil hit Brock’s nostrils like a scent memory -- it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been in that very same position before, roles reversed. He knew exactly what it smelled like, what it tasted like, what it felt like to have the weapon between his lips.  


On occasion, one of them would cock the handgun and watch the other tense instinctively, muscles clenched and at the ready. But that was rarely after an op, when both of them were simultaneously amped up and exhausted. They both needed clear heads, if one of them was going to be deep-throating a loaded gun. So, Rumlow kept it clean and simple, and just fisted his hand in Rollins’ slicked back hair and tugged. Brock even made it easy for him, because he was kind like that, tilting Jack’s head back at the perfect angle for the gun to push in deeper, to where Brock could feel the warmth of lips against his fingers. “Jesus,” The whisper was out of his lips before he could think better of it -- Jack was the talker, not him -- but the action of slowly fucking the warming metal against fragile tissue was too distracting, too rousing for him to care.  


Rollins gagged, if only because he made himself (because he liked that kind of shit and figured everyone else did too), and Rumlow gave it a good long minute before he pulled the gun free and let go of the other man’s hair.  


“Ain’t gonna tell me how good I was?” It was a cheap shot Jack took, aiming low and right at Brock’s weak spots. But, what the fuck ever -- Brock let it slide in favor of meticulously cleaning off his gun, vividly picturing the way he’d watched it slide right down Rollins’ throat, easy peasy, merely seconds before.  


The lack of response or even acknowledgement was poor foresight on Brock’s own part. After all, they were both needy in different ways -- and while Brock got pissy when his needs weren’t met, Jack just took matters into his own hands. And the brute of a man clearly didn’t object at all to taking down a man with a gun in his hand, body-checking and wrangling Rumlow until he was on his stomach on the dusty ground, pistol kicked meters to the side.  


Brock could barely kick the ringing out of his ears from a well aimed headbutt before Rollins was shoving and smearing his face into the floor with a growl. “Good thing we ain’t doing anything strenuous tomorrow, Princess, because you’re going to be aching.” A rough hand drew over Rumlow’s cheek, smearing dirt and sand over the sweaty stubble. “But you’re going to be so good for me, aren’t you?”  
And damn, even if those words made Rumlow breathe heavy, made his heart beat hot and hard in his chest, they still had him kicking and lashing out. Because fuck that. He went for Rollins' legs, his head, his hands, anything he could reach -- but Jack was good at his job and knew how to use his bulk to his advantage: he had little trouble keeping Brock pinned.  


"Come on. Easy does it." The sound of ripping material was unmistakable as Brock twisted too hard to the left, which meant he paused --and  went right. After all, it was still a game, still a way to kill the boredom seeping into his veins and ease the stir-crazy itch in Jack's skin before someone important got shot or dismembered. "There you go, just like that." Jack cooed in his ear as he eased him up and onto his knees with a hand under his hip bone -- a rough press before he started on Brock's belt.  


It was neither cruel nor kind, what they did and how they went about it. However, it was maybe slightly nice the way that Jack thought to lean down and run his tongue over Rumlow after he yanked his pants to his knees. It was wet and hot and fucking degrading -- and it immediately had Brock keening and whining like it always did. “Good way to shut you up,” Jack always said, which was a fucking lie because it usually just made him louder.  


Brock loathed it. With a passion.  


Jack knew.  


Which was the precise reason he took his time with it, making sure Brock was nice and spit-slick before he forewent any more ceremony and pushed inside. Lube or gun oil (or whatever was lying around) were only niceties for when either of them were feeling particularly generous. And now? The biting burn of just spit and minimal prep was just what Rumlow wanted -- Rollins was more than happy to provide.  


“Just like that, Princess. God -- you’re fucking good. Look at you, taking it like you were made for it. Fuckin’ perfect.” Jack fell into his typical endless stream of absolute bullshit as he pressed Brock’s head against the floor, putting all his weight onto his superior officer as he fucked into him.  


It was awful, demeaning, and disgraceful -- and Brock loved every searing second of it.  


And -- it was over far before he ever would have liked. Rollins was always the one to decide, if only because he knew Rumlow’s buttons far too well. He was a lazy asshole when it came down to it, but at least he had the common decency (sometimes) to get both of them off. Alls Jack had to do was grab Rumlow by the throat and squeeze when he wanted him to shoot off, lean down and tell him just how good he was being -- and that was that.  Rumlow came with a shout and a belated groan, seeing spots as Rollins gripped too tight around his neck and fucked the last of his release into him, talking bullshit all the while.  


If Rollins was feeling particularly generous, he’d fuck the sensitive right out of Rumlow with his fingers after they both came, finger him until he was practically crying and whining on the ground before he made Brock lick them clean. Now, he just simply pushed him to the floor and hiked his pants up to his hips, deigning to do Brock’s belt back up after he’d done his own. “You’re such a fucking pussy, Christ.” Rollins couldn’t stop himself from laughing and ruffling his senior officer’s hair before replacing Brock’s gun back to his holster.  


With a hiss, Rumlow righted himself, leveraging himself onto one of the cots in the room -- didn’t care which. “Fuck off.” He let himself fall onto the mattress, watching the dust swirl around him as he landed. Christ, what a dump of a safehouse. Fuck the showers -- he was going to be tasting dust and sand in his throat for weeks. And, when Rollins didn’t budge, standing over his cot smirking like the cat who’d gotten the canary: “Seriously. Get the fuck out. Do some reports, make yourself useful, you fucking oaf.”  

“Yeah, yeah. Sleep tight, Princess.”

**Author's Note:**

> title from anti-flag's _tar and sagebrush_.


End file.
